My Deep Dive on Typhoon Network
Typhoon Network is a privacy solution on top of the Binance Smart Chain. It’s a fork of Tornado Cash (Ethereum). It allows a user to deposit a specific amount ranging from 0.1 BNB to 100 BNB. This specific amount is necessary to prevent spotting your address by typing in any amount. Here there are 4 categories of pools — 0.1 BNB, 1 BNB etc and will only include deposits of that specific amount. The user should then wait for a reasonable amount of time to increase the privacy of his transaction.
Typhoon Network uses zK Snarks, a form of zero knowledge cryptography where the user is able to cryptographically prove that he has a certain info without having to reveal it. How it’s used here is that a secret is generated when you initiate the deposit. The secret acts as a password that connects the withdrawal. The secret must be stored safely as it’s necessary to initiate the withdrawal in the subsequent transaction.
It is necessary for a user to participate in an anonymity set (pool) which is large enough to mask his deposit. Typhoon still hasn’t reached that substantially large mark though compared to its competitor Swirl Cash on BSC. Greater marketing awareness, the superior tokenomics and the launch of its community relayers could be a gamechanger there.
Relayers
It is necessary for a user to withdraw to a new address unconnected to the address used for deposit for optimal privacy if he so wishes. But the problem with the TYPH flow is that the new address must have a BNB amount as gas for executing the transaction. And seeding that address will compromise privacy.
So the solution is the presence of community relayers, a third party acting as a user optional mediator for these transactions. Relayers only have the power to publish transactions on top of the chain and facilitate withdrawal in return for relayer fees. They don’t have the ability to change withdrawal address info, amount info and thereby can’t steal funds. Using a relayer avoids the transaction history from being associated with the user address in the initial step
Right now, it’s still at an experimental stage. And if you want to be a relayer, you gotta hold at least 5000 TYPH (subject to change)
Tokenomics
Unlike other privacy solutions on BSC like Swirl, Typhoon seeks to stand out from the rest of the forks by providing greater incentive for TYPH holders beyond the governance meme, the only redeeming feature of holding TORN & every other fork out there. They seek to share the fees generated from the platform with token holders. They have mentioned in the whitepaper that they seek to offer the holding of TYPH as an incentive for reduction of usage fees. If you’re holding your BNB in that anonymity set, you could be offered TYPH as a reward the longer you hold it there.
A substantial chunk of the liquidity is staked on their own pools on top of Beefy and Goose which reduces circulating supply on PCS.
The launch of community relayers with a minimum deposit of 5000 TYPH could also tighten the float in these exchanges.
Stormy, the lead dev also has certain thoughts on making the distribution accessible for active community participants/stakers only. As of writing, the token is not functioning with the tokenomics currently and will be addressed in the future along with the fee structure. Expected by Q3 ’21 according to the whitepaper.
Code Audit
The Typhoon Network has had their code reviewed by an audit firm RD Auditors. RD Auditors moonlights as both a crypto community and an auditing firm. They have handled the audit of trendy projects such as BSCStarter and Wault Finance.
Bear in mind, it’s not a guarantee that the project is not vulnerable to a hack, lol. Many projects last year audited by big names have been hacked in the past post audit (see $VALUE, $PICKLE etc).
The ZkSnark code will be reviewed by another auditor currently unannounced.
Sale Details
Typhoon Finance launched through an IFO on the Goose Finance Launchpad raising almost $3 mn by allocating almost 30% of the token supply to the sale. 2 million was sent to the team and 1 million was allocated for $EGG burn. They had an IFO launch price of $0.5/TYPH. The goose finance sale method was a pro rata/overflow method where users get tokens in proportion to their % contribution in the overall sale. The sale was oversubscribed by 415%, displaying huge interest. But this was a whale biased game. So minnows were priced out by the whales during the 12 hour fixed sale duration and also got dumped on post listing from an ATH of $1.4 to 0.2 cents, a double whammy for minnows.
Currently the circulating supply is almost 5 mn TYPH, including the supply that’s reserved for liquidity in pools. They have their own LP pool as well as pools on Goose Finance and Beefy Finance. They’re listed on Goose Finance, Pancake Swap and 1inch exchange.
Marketing Strategy
Currently Stormy and the team understand that addressing the anonymity set liquidity is at the forefront of their issues along with the technical roadmap. See my discussion with him for further details. They seek to promote greater awareness about the project. They have had an article published by BSC news, a publication focused on BSC projects. They have banners advertising the tool on the site as well as an AMA upcoming on the 31st. They claim to have brought in advisors who have worked with bigger projects on BSC to guide them on their marketing strategy, TBA..
Team Brief
The team is purely anon with Stormy Contracts as the lead dev (see my interview with him about his and the team background). The dev team has 10+ years exp in fintech, software and distributed systems. They also have a couple of freelance designers on standby for design changes. 2 yet-to-be confirmed advisors for marketing strategy — Stormy claims they have experience working with bigger BSC projects
Why they stand out
The team is great with the community and have the right approach to making this platform big. Over my interview, you’ll see that Stormy is a patient and level headed dude who has the technical chops necessary to see this project through with his team.
The focus on boosting their anonymity set with a marketing push, the launch of their community relayers and the BUSD support will be big. Once the anonymity set is big enough, SDK and integrations with other projects can be a huge game changer. The community must also push for the tokenomics and fee structure to be updated to really make this project a mammoth.
They will release BUSD support soon, it’s phenomenal because when you’re waiting for decent enough privacy in the Typhoon pools, you won’t have to worry about volatility risk when you’re in BUSD compared to BNB. It allows you to spend more time in the pools and achieve greater privacy
Relayers are complete and ready to be deployed. No other project on BSC has that currently. They also have the lowest fees compared to their competitors on BSC with around 0.1% fees.
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Disclaimer: This is me, just exploring and going headlong into various projects that I find interesting. This is not investment advice. I will not be held liable for any losses that you make by taking a bet off my articles on these projects.
